Education and Development

Basic education extends beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic, to include a broader idea of learning. Ensuring that school students attend class and that teachers lecture is a technical issue, and in the wider implications of what "education" can mean a somewhat limited goal. Today in Azerbaijan students continue to attend class, take notes, and pass exams. Azerbaijan has a strong history of literacy, as far as knowledge acquisition is concerned. Azerbaijan has found, however, that since the collapse of the Soviet Union placing children in schools and students in universities and having them memorize facts is inadequate for a country continuing to re-build itself.

Education is a social phenomenon that needs to be flexible, ready to adjust to and reflect particular moments and demands in history as experienced in particular places. A rigid educational system that measures success through the acquisition of "approved" knowledge can certainly be effective for developing citizenry educated according to a prescribed paradigm. This unfortunately creates a system where educational institutions are more like factories than places of learning, where schools employ teachers who know the correct answers and the work of the student is to memorize and reproduce the correct answers at exam time.

Challenges
Through revision of national educational laws and government funded international exchange programs, NGO initiatives, foreign governments, and World Bank credits Azerbaijan has been attempting to re-write curriculum and expand educational infrastructure to meet the challenges of modern life and the demands of a competitive global marketplace. Restructuring, unfortunately, has been somewhat unsystematic as serious institutional, methodological, and infrastructural obstacles block a continuous and smooth transition. The range of difficulties hampering improvement in educational quality are multiple: uneven financial support for schools and educators, resistance to change at various levels, outmoded management styles based on outdated bureaucratic models, as yet nascent understanding and acceptance of flexible curricula and variable teaching approaches, lack of educational resources and in the appropriate language(s), and the disparity between curricula and the realities of the labor market.

For everyone involved in educational activities in Azerbaijan the ongoing challenges facing schools and the wider system are clear. The physical condition of many of Azerbaijan's schools might surprise western educators (notwithstanding the many modern and excellently equipped secondary and higher education institutions found in Baku and in some of the country’s regions). Educators and students working with limited heat and electricity lack as well contemporary Azeri language educational texts and supporting materials. The system for evaluating educators and school directors, while improving, remains in many cases informal and subjective. There is virtually no system in place for dealing effectively with under performing educators or for providing adequate incentives to those who inspire. Highly qualified teachers may leave education in order to seek higher salaries, or may move from the regions to the capital, creating a surplus of teachers in Baku but a deficit outside. Teacher preparation programs tend to focus on content rather than process. Young teachers may be enthusiastic and committed, but lack training in innovative learning and teaching styles. Rarely does university curriculum prepare students to compete internationally or provide the skills necessary for higher-level jobs. Students with learning difficulties are misdiagnosed or ignored, and the collapse of the network of extracurricular opportunities contributes to the promotion of legions of languid students.

The problems and challenges facing students and educators today differ dramatically from their predecessors. Both are required to live and develop within economic and social conditions that radically differ from anything Soviet or found in the pre-oil pipeline revenue period of the1990s. In a system trying to rebuild, creators rather than inheritors are needed. Skills and attitudes that promote this vision are in part what Azerbaijan needs.

Prospects
Rather than concentrating on the acquisition of subject matter, new models of learning need to focus on developing intellectual skills. Quality education incorporates but is not limited to the facilitation of independent thought, critical thinking, and the provision of adequate learning infrastructure. An appreciation and understanding of diversity, combined with skills for negotiating differences, and building communities that respect and acknowledge pluralism and environmental issues, are part of a reforming curriculum within an evolving educational system. Effective teaching can help students learn more about their places within their particular cultures and politics, and to do so within expanding networks of knowledge, self-awareness, and increasing capacity for critical thinking.

Engaging students to reflect on their own sources of values and those of others, and to grapple with challenging ethical, moral, and human dilemmas is part of good teaching. Good teaching should reach beyond the classroom toward building communities that respect and acknowledge difference. This is as well part of a core of values that brought into the classroom can help join the public with higher education as part of a project to develop a more robust civil society.

These educational ideals have been championed by various educational organizations, both governmental and non-governmental. International educational NGOs promote educational and cultural exchange and training programs as an investment in both national development and global understanding. Such programs have a long track record of helping to develop better educational infrastructure, stronger educators, and future leaders through both in-country educational programs as well as exchanges to, for example, the US, UK, Germany, and Romania, for short and long term educational experiences. Virtually every student and teacher training program administered by international educational NGOs in Azerbaijan recognize that citizenship education is a critical component of on-going egalitarian transition. Civic education, lived, studied, or developed, is essential for personal development, for facilitating the ability to make wiser choices, understanding the relationships between rights and responsibilities, and for caring and working toward the common good. International educational programs which give first hand insight into a functioning democracy, facilitate curriculum development and materials acquisition, and guide methodology revision can help empower Azeri educators working together through teacher unions to further influence and guide positive educational change.

Cooperation
Teachers and students participating in the large variety of opportunities available through the Azerbaijani government and organizations such as American Councils-ACCELS, the British Council, the former Civic Education Project, IREX, Junior Achievement, the former Project Harmony, and the Open Society Institute, experience a large range of benefits. Participants often demonstrate increased self-esteem, critical thinking, and professionalism, an ability to both teach and learn interactively, and often show higher respect for and interest in other students' opinions. As funding comes from the Azerbaijani, US and other governments, as well as foundations and international businesses, these programs are provided at generally no cost to schools and students.

Inertia either in physics or in education is a force difficult to overcome. Innovation in the Azeri education system, however, is taking place. Where innovative practice is present it should be further recognized and extended to other classes, schools, and regions. There is much that is right in the educational system. There is also much that needs changing. The possible benefits from Azerbaijan's newfound oil-derived wealth include modernization, higher living standards, and diversifying opportunities more generally. The benefits, unfortunately, are not yet universally available nor regionally shared, and Azerbaijan's market which may become an effective agent for development is not yet fully supported by rules based on common social criteria. If Azerbaijan is to continue to develop healthily (and not only experience strong economic growth), and its citizenry to benefit from the advantages of its national endowment of natural wealth, then its educational system must adapt and prepare its participants to compete and cooperate effectively nationally and globally. The educational system is evolving. The Ministry of Education, working with the large range of government and NGO administered education initiatives, is promoting this evolution. Is the pace of change meeting the needs of the country, and is the educational system adequately meeting the challenges of developing a strong civil society? Naturally the answers are a matter of perspective. The questions, however, need to be posed inside the classroom to students and by students to teachers, and as well, so too teachers need to ask their directors and ministry representatives, as well as themselves. Basic education, in its full sense, is crucial to promote freedom and fight poverty. It gives people a voice in a nation's political, social, and economic progress. It is crucial for a functioning civil society operating with respect for the rule of law.

Azerbaijan's education system has many success stories and its successes increase annually. Kofi Annan said that, "Education is central to development, social progress and human freedom," and as long as the Ministry of Education, Azerbaijan, believes that these attributes can be facilitated with the cooperation of International educational NGOs, such organizations will remain active participants in Azerbaijan’s educational development process.

(Note: An earlier version of this commentary appeared on Dec 28, 2002, in the now defunct Baku Today)